Description
This paper examines how the evolving dynamics of climate leadership, centred on the European Union (EU) and China, are reshaping the norms and power structures of international order. As the EU’s long-standing claim to normative climate leadership confronts internal political fragmentation, economic insecurity, and declining global influence, China has advanced an alternative model grounded in state-led transition, industrial policy, and South–South cooperation. These contrasting approaches reveal much about the intersection of climate diplomacy, legitimacy, and global justice in an era of geopolitical disorder.
Through comparative analysis, the paper explores how the EU’s leadership—rooted in regulation, example, and consent—contrasts with China’s more pragmatic model, whose legitimacy derives from its capacity to deliver rapid, large-scale transition, particularly across the geopolitical Global South. It further considers how China’s leadership, while gaining traction through performance and delivery, remains more contested within the geopolitical Global North, where claims to authority are still measured by transparency, participation, and normative commitment. By connecting literatures on climate leadership, just transitions, and international order, this paper argues that the contest between EU and Chinese approaches reflects an ongoing reconfiguration of the moral and political economy of global decarbonisation. Rather than a straightforward shift in leadership, this evolution suggests a more complex and regionally differentiated redefinition of what legitimate climate authority may come to mean in a multipolar world.
